Avocado Trauma

1. Holy wah-ka-mo’-lay, Batman!

2. 1. I’m glad I’ve never spent a holiday in Pasadena.
   2. I wish you had included page 204. I think I’d like to try the avocado ice cream.
   3. Apparently the author knew Jax the Guacamole expert. https://avocadosfrommexico.com/guacamole/glossary/guacamole-101/say-guacamole-spanish/

   1. It’s from a different cookbook, but there’s an avocado ice cream recipe from 1974 tested on the Mid-Century Modern blog that you might want to try, here: https://www.midcenturymenu.com/avocado-ice-cream-1974-a-vintage-recipe-test/
      Apparently it was pretty good!

      1. Martha,

         Thanks for the link! I’ve bookmarked the site. It’s got some horrors and some actually great looking recipes. 🙂

3. Avocados are almost like some kind of alien plant to me. I don’t get why they’re so popular. Maybe it’s an American thing?

   1. Except they’re also wildly popular in Japan, Australia, Britain, China, South Africa…

      And, naturally, par for the course in Mexico and Central America.

   2. I don’t care for them, but “there is no accounting for taste [buds]”.

4. You asked, “Also, when was guacamole pronounced with silent g?”

   Um …. for many native Spanish speakers, there is a silent G. Here in Texas, most folks do not pronounce the G. We would also never dream of putting cream cheese into guac.

   1. I was going to mention that — cream cheese, whyyyy?!

5. This was really ahead of its time, but that time was over 50 years ago and so… bye-bye.

   I had avocado toast for breakfast today, even though I am not a millennial.

   Mary: it’s more of a “(tiny bit of h)wa” sound, actually. It’s to do with dipthongs and such in Spanish. Thus “hwac” en (Mexican) Español, and “guac” in English.

   Under any pronunciation, it does NOT have sour cream. Or that little amount of chili. And it ought to be lime juice.

   Signed,
   Person who has spent their entire life in parts of Nuevo España that ended up full of Yanquis

6. Even in 1967, my family did not eat canned green beans. There was no need, Clarence Birdseye having perfected his freezing technique some decades earlier. Why on earth would they use them in the “Patio Salad?” Which would still be awful even if no canned products were used. Yuck.

   This seems like a book targeted to someone with no experience with avocados and no imagination. But the imagination of the authors is perverted. I wonder whether people who were victimized by these recipes ever ate an avocado again?

7. I’m not much of a cook but I’d hope modern-day cookbooks are not this labour intensive. The avocados would be brown by the time I got through making Avocado Italia. Some of these recipes seem to be just for filling the page count. I assumed this was a thin book until I saw the horrifying reference to a “page 204”. Purge.

8. guacamole on corn on the cob? Chicken livers superba? “nippy sauce”? Disgusting!! Let me poll the avocado coworker on this when she’s in next.

9. Any food called “Dipsy Doodle” is designed for Teletubbies, not adult humans.

   1. Tubby Custard Green is made of AVOCADOS!!!

10. Fozzie Bear says: Guaca, Guaca!

11. I’m stunned that el pollo is the least gaudy thing on that plate of shrimp rafts.

12. I absolutely despise avocados and this book isn’t making me like those snot textured things any more.

    BTW, I highly suggest looking up the Avocado Mafia.

13. Re the Spanish pronunciation of G, in the 1930s I suspect there was a preference to pronounce the G in “Los Angeles” in the Spanish way, but Anglophones ended up saying it with a hard G, i.e. “Los Angle-les”. (Angelenos, please tell me if my guess is right, I’m a lifelong Minnesotan, and my mom who briefly lived in the LA ‘burbs is no longer alive for me to ask )

14. The g is guacamole does sound like an w in Spanish, hence the Mexican slang “güey” is often written “wey”.

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